"Etoooooo!!!!"
Seeing Eto with a [Kagune] piercing straight through her abdomen, I lunged forward.
For an instant, memories of the day I lost my father flashed through my head.
The despair from back then. The sense of loss.
The grief. The rage.
Again?
Was I going to lose family to the same bastard all over again?
"Aaaaargh!!!!"
Meanwhile, Hitokawa let out a beastly roar and swung his greatsword at the [Kagune] that had stabbed Eto.
His face twisted like a demon's, as if he were furious at himself for letting his guard down and getting caught off guard like an idiot.
Slash! The [Kagune] tentacle was severed, and I caught Eto's body as she collapsed, the [Kagune] still lodged in her abdomen.
"Eto! Stay with me, Eto!!"
"Don't pull that tentacle out, Koma! It'll cause massive bleeding!!"
I caught Eto before she hit the floor, but she was unconscious. Blood was only spilling from her mouth, pushed up from her abdomen.
Hitokawa stood protectively in front of us and faced off against the Ghoul.
He ground his teeth, clearly displeased with this absurd turn of events.
"Hey, hey! What kind of sick new hobby is this? You rip the mask off the insect-masked bastard, and why the hell does the Artist pop out instead?"
Hitokawa knew the Artist's composite face from the CCG's distributed materials. So he recognized him at a glance. This bastard was the Artist.
Under Hitokawa's hostile glare, the Artist shrugged.
"It's not some magic trick. And it's not a disguise, either. I and the section chief are separate people. We just share one body."
"...Dissociative identity disorder?"
"Something like that. As you know, I'm just a man who wants to devote himself to art. I leave the troublesome physical labor to the section chief. Though I didn't expect to be taken down like this."
The Artist shifted his body as if sore all over, revealing another [Kagune] besides the one that had just stabbed Eto.
"Thanks to that, two of my four [kakuhou] are unusable now. The section chief can only move two [Kagune], after all."
That was the mistake Eto had made.
Because he had only used two [Kagune], she hadn't imagined there might be another [kakuhou] inside him. So she had subdued him after breaking only two.
"You bastard..."
"Don't listen to a word that bastard says."
I moved Eto to one side.
After tilting her head so the blood rising in her throat wouldn't block her airway, I got back to my feet.
Then I reached out my hand.
Bang! "...!"
The Artist reflexively raised his arm to guard.
He twitched his brow, probably feeling the pain as the round bit into his forearm.
"A [Q Bullet]. I thought I'd given that to another subject. How do you have it?"
The red round pierced his forearm and lodged in his shoulder. He pulled his hand away and asked me that.
"Who knows. Go ask my father in the afterlife, bastard."
The heat boiling in my chest leaked out through my voice.
Hitokawa, standing nearby, tried to stop me.
"Hey, Koma. Calm down. You can't lose your head here."
"I am perfectly calm. I'm just calmly thinking about how to kill that bastard."
"How is that calm at all!!"
Hitokawa didn't look convinced, but I really was keeping myself under control.
If I wasn't, I would've already emptied the remaining four rounds into that bastard.
I had to hit a vital point and bring him down for good.
I had to settle this here. Only then could I focus on treating Eto.
Even if I ran off with Eto, he'd be more than capable of chasing us down relentlessly.
The shot I'd just fired was meant to test his reaction speed.
As expected, he'd guarded with physical ability beyond a human's. If I wanted to put a bullet into him for sure, I needed a more systematic plan.
So I endure it. I suppress this feeling, this rage I wanted to spit out right now.
"Mm~~! Yes! That's it! That expression! That emotion! Inspiration is surging through me. As expected, you have the makings of a masterpiece!"
How my clenched-teeth glare and frantic calculations looked to him, I had no idea, but the bastard spread his arms wide, his face flushed with excitement.
"The idiots of this world don't understand beauty. They just keep living without even realizing how city life wears down the mind. They're livestock. So beauty is necessary! Beauty that can turn livestock into intellectuals! Takaki Koma! You'll be the foundation of a great work that expresses that beauty!"
"If you love your masterpiece so much, why don't you become one yourself!!"
As if he couldn't stand listening to that mad rambling any longer, Hitokawa charged in with his greatsword hanging low.
The Artist looked at him like he was a nuisance, then sneered when he saw the greatsword.
"That [Quinque], [Koukaku]-type. You know it's a bad match for my [Rinkaku], and you still come at me. How foolish."
Two streams of [Kagune] writhed like dancing snakes and lashed out at Hitokawa.
Boom!Clang! Dodging the serpentine attacks and deflecting them with the blade, Hitokawa pressed in toward the Artist. He swung with heavy force, but the Artist evaded with light footwork.
I grew impatient and adjusted my grip on the pistol. With the two of them tangled up in close combat, I couldn't fire recklessly. If I messed up, Hitokawa could take the hit.
The chance would come. A chance for them to separate and for me to target the Artist.
I just had to wait for that.
"Haaaat!!"
With a shout, Hitokawa swung his greatsword toward the Artist's leg. He was trying to take away the bastard's mobility.
But that intent was ruined by a [Kagune] strike aimed at the side of the blade.
With a heavy impact creating an opening, the [Kagune] stabbed into Hitokawa's abdomen.
Hitokawa barely managed to pull the greatsword in front of his body in time, so his abdomen wasn't pierced, but he couldn't stop himself from being blasted backward by the overwhelming force.
Thud! "Cough!!"
He slammed into the wall and coughed up air. The hand gripping the greatsword trembled violently, and fine cracks spread across the wing-shaped blade.
As the Artist rushed in to finish it, I didn't miss the opening and pulled the trigger.
Bang! "...!"
The bastard stopped short and threw his head back.
The bullet aimed for his temple only grazed a few strands of hair before vanishing. Damn it. For a rookie like me, that was a rare good shot, and he still dodged it.
The Artist's attention shifted to me.
The moment he stopped moving, Hitokawa kicked off the wall and charged. But the Artist must have read it, because he swung his [Kagune] without even looking.
Hitokawa ignored the [Kagune] that brushed past his body and kept charging.
Even as the sharp scales tore away part of his side and cheek, he didn't stop.
"!"
Only then did the Artist turn to Hitokawa in surprise, but by then the greatsword was already in motion.
The Artist bent his long waist and barely slipped out of the blade's range. But—
Pffft! Even though he had clearly dodged the greatsword, a sudden small blade flew out and buried itself in the Artist's abdomen.
It was a feather-like blade attached to the greatsword. Fired out, it erased the distance he had just created.
Wounded, the Artist retreated to widen the gap.
Hitokawa's side must have been badly hurt too, because instead of pursuing, he clutched the bleeding wound.
"Hitokawa!"
"I'm fine!"
He seemed to stagger for a moment, but then he gripped the greatsword with both hands again and faced the Artist.
"This guy still has injuries left over from Eto's attack. And he can only use two [Kagune]. If this were any other time, the power gap would've crushed us in an instant, but right now, the two of us can handle him!"
That was what Hitokawa said, but the situation didn't feel nearly that favorable.
Maybe because of the matchup, he couldn't land a proper hit without risking injury, and once I ran out of bullets, I'd lose my only means of pressure and become dead weight.
"Remaining rounds: three."
I had to finish this in three shots somehow. I couldn't waste even one.
I aimed the pistol at the Artist and watched his movements.
The Artist, looking back and forth between me and Hitokawa, suddenly let out a sigh.
"I may not like using my body, but being pushed around by the likes of you is bad for my pride. No choice."
He looked reluctant, but there was no hesitation in his actions.
He reached his hand downward. What he grabbed was none other than the middle-aged Ghoul known as the section chief, one of his comrades.
The Artist roughly seized the unconscious section chief by the neck and lifted him up.
It was an action that showed no trace of camaraderie or sentiment. It didn't even look like he was trying to wake a fainted ally.
Then Hitokawa's face changed drastically, as if he'd realized something.
He charged at the Artist and shouted, "Koma!! Stop that bastard's move!!"
"...?!"
I didn't know what was going on, but it was obvious something urgent was happening.
The moment I pulled the trigger and the moment Hitokawa swung his greatsword were nearly simultaneous.
Bang!Crack! The bullet bored into flesh, and the greatsword split flesh apart.
But it wasn't the Artist's body.
It was the section chief's.
The section chief's corpse, with a bullet in his chest and the upper part of his shoulder sliced off by the greatsword, dropped limply to the floor.
...Then where did the upper shoulder go? And where did the Artist disappear to?
Crunch.Munch.
"Ahh~ I really do hate the taste. It tastes awful, but I can't help it."
Thick blood dripped down.
From the ceiling.
Our gazes shot upward.
On the ceiling, the Artist was hanging upside down with his fingers driven into the concrete, calmly devouring his comrade's corpse.
"You..."
"...Crazy bastard."
Hitokawa said it, and I followed right after. Now I understood exactly what he had sensed.
Wasn't there a very simple, very easy way for a Ghoul to recover from injuries?
By "eating."
The Artist had eaten his own comrade to heal his injuries.
Sssshhh! Another [Kagune] sprouted from his waist.
Three dark red tentacles danced around the Artist's body.
"With that amount, I can only recover one [kakuhou]? Well, this should be enough."
The Artist pulled his fingers free from the ceiling.
Dropping down above our heads, he spread his [Kagune] wide and swung them.
"Let's start round two."
BOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!
The [Kagune] swept past us and struck the floor in three separate places.
The impact rippled through the already flimsy floor of the abandoned building, and cracks spread like spiderwebs.
Then the ground beneath our feet gave way, and a dizzying sense of weightlessness pierced through my body.
"You've got to be kidding meeeee!!!"
"A second phase here is way too much!!!"
We screamed as we fell into the basement along with a shower of broken stone.